Structuring site content in Tahoe

Understanding how Open edX content is structured in AMC is key to making sure you are designing a good looking Open edX site. Here's some helpful information.

Content is structured through Layout Blocks, which can be divided in five different ways:

Within each Layout Blocks is where you add your Content Items, which can either be Elements or more Layout Blocks.

Static Pages

All static pages are open for you to be as creative as you want to be. You can add any content you want to any page ( for more information on adding content to your Open edX site via AMC, click here). However, whenever you're starting out, each page begins with default filler content. This is what it looks like from the page editor:

Now here's a live view of the same page (accessed by click on the button "View page in browser"):

As you can see, each layout section is distinctly separated. This is how each layout block will always appear as you continue to add to your page. Again, there are five options for layout blocks, as you can see below:

Adding Sub Layout Blocks

You can add layout blocks within layout blocks. This allows for a lot of creativity. However, we would caution users to not add too many as it can make your Open edX site difficult to read.

For example, this is what a 2-column block looks like within a 2-column block:

White is the default background color for these elements, and as you can see, it's already starting to look a little crowded. However, there are good use case for doing something like using it for separate CTA buttons:

In the above example, I made sure the background color of the match the background color of the higher level 2-column layout block.

Important Note: Design choices made on lower level layout blocks will override the higher level design choices. You can see this above. The background color dark blue is overridden by the white background colour of the sub-columns.

Special Cases

Courses page

The Courses page is one of the three pages that can't be disabled. It also contains a content block that can't be removed.

The Course Catalogue Element is an element that exists by default and cannot be removed.

About page

A course's About page contains an element called the Course About Layout. This is the part of the page that is set on a course-by-course basis. The bulk of the content on this page is edited in Open edX Studio.